Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The garden is starting to look a little bedraggled and
bewildered. Or maybe it’s just me. I confess it’s harder and harder to be
enthused about getting all sweaty and grubby digging in the dirt when the act
of just picking up a shovel causes little rivulets of sweat to run down your
face.
Let’s be serious, we’d all rather be hanging at the pool or playing in
the ocean, when the humidity hits 100 percent, but there’s nothing inherently
bad about working in the garden no matter what the temperature. So I’m not sure
exactly why there’s this fallacy that it’s bad to plant things at the height of
the summer. I hear it all the time, “oh no, I’m not going to plant now, I’m
going to come back to the nursery and get the (your plant choice goes here) I
want later, because, ‘it’s better to plant in the fall.’”Hmm. Okay, it’s true that planting in the fall is great for deciduous
trees and shrubs; I think people just morphed it into a reason to avoid getting
sweaty at the height of the summer.
I do need however, to clear a few things up.
If a plant is sitting in a
nursery above ground or in a pot nothing would make it happier then to be put
into the ground. The same lovely ground that holds water and is cooler and gives
roots room to grow. All those plants you’re eyeing for later would throw
themselves at your legs and beg to go home with you if only they could. Of
course, when you get them home, they’re going to need water, and lots of it as
they are all getting watered everyday at the nursery, but you all are fooling
yourselves if you think those same plants and going to do better when they come
to your house a month later than if they come now.
The key is the water. Yes you need lots of it, but just increasing
the days you water may not be the perfect solution. One of the mistakes people
make is to set their irrigation clocks for 45 minutes three times a week in the
spring and then when it gets hot turn them on every day. Big mistake. 45
minutes for overhead sprinklers might be okay for a lawn or other things with
shallow roots, but plants really want nice long drinks that soak deep down into
their soil. This allows their roots to follow the water deep into the soil and
helps build a healthy and strong root system. If the water doesn’t get deep
enough the roots will actually rise up towards the surface searching for the
moisture and become shallow and stressed.
Even your lawn wants a longer
soaking.When I tell folks this, they ask me how long their
sprinklers should be on. I of course, can’t tell them, because it all depends
on their soil. So I tell them to get out a shovel and dig a hole next to the
plant they’re worried about right after a zone is finished. I tell them to dig
down 12 inches and to check the soil. If the soil is moist all the way down
great! If it’s sopping wet, there’s too much water, if only an inch or two is
damp, not enough. There is no magic irrigation formula, besides as the weather
changes your irrigation system must change too. Which means you will need to
learn how to use your irrigation clock.The horror on people’s faces when I mention this is
startling. They’ve all figured out how to use their smart phones, but are
stumped by irrigation clocks. Hmm. I don’t believe it. Come on folks, you can
do it! I know you can. I guess people want to forget that plants are living things.
It’s weird; they understand their children need to drink more when they’re all
exhausted from the heat. They give their pets more water, but it’s like people
have confused their gardens with their living rooms.
A garden is not a static
thing. It’s not an object, or a thing it’s an ecosystem -- it’s alive. It needs
water and light and air and food. You would think this is basic, but the number
of people who give me blank looks when I bring this up is staggering.And the answer is not to just turn the water on and let it
run. The soil needs a chance to breath in between waterings.
There is such a
thing as overwatering a plant. It’s hard to do with a hydrangea that lives in
the sun, but if you have them planted in the sun at the base of a spruce tree
and you give the hydrangeas as much water as they want you will rot the roots
of the spruce. Trust me, I’ve done it. So learn to put plants with the same
watering needs together. A willow will lap up more water than I hydrangeas ever
will, lavender will die. And best yet, move those hydrangeas into a place where
they get shade in the afternoon.
So yes, you need less water in a wet spring then in a dry
one, obviously, and any summer needs more water than spring, but more the
answer isn’t a cut and dry one. Maybe you double the time on the zones out in
the scorching sun, but the shady beds only need 15 minutes more. Or maybe also
need add a day. I can’t tell you. Only your soil can speak such secrets to you.
And they only way to get your soil to talk is to get a shovel or a trowel and
get sweaty.

Paige Patterson wants to confess that she is still putting
hydrangeas out in the sun because she is running out of other places to put
them.